


In All My Dreams I Drown

by Star_flaming



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Forced Sleep, Gen, Kylo tries to be helpful and it backfires, Nightmares, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 22:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13467609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_flaming/pseuds/Star_flaming
Summary: In which Hux has recurring stress nightmares and Kylo very clumsily tries to help his insomniac General and probably accidentally traumatizes him in the process.





	In All My Dreams I Drown

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, heads up if the title didn't give it away, Hux dreams a lot about drowning, in case that could distress anyone to read about. Also, this was written in the space of 24 hours and barely proofread so there we go
> 
> Title and Inspiration from ["In All My Dreams I Drown" from The Devil's Carnival](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiEYaqRyah8)

Hux slept less these days, which was a remarkable feat considering the amount of sleep he had gotten before, but there was really nothing for it. Kylo was simply not prepared to be Supreme Leader and if Hux wasn’t there the whole Order would fall apart. It wasn’t just military, after all, and Kylo was like to starve out the civilians for all that he knew how to handle them.

There had been a moment, just a moment, when he thought he could just…shoot Kylo. Finish him off, be rid of him. And sometimes he wondered if Kylo knew about it somehow. There were looks Kylo gave him, that despite his expressiveness were unreadable. They unnerved him, and he buried his head further in work to avoid them.

There was no ceremony, technically, to instate a Supreme Leader, and given who Kylo Ren was as a person it was probably safer to simply disseminate the knowledge that Snoke had been killed by the Resistance in the course of a battle and that his primary apprentice had taken up the mantle. It sounded so official, as though Kylo had made some statement of following in his master’s footsteps and acknowledging the weight of leadership. It said nothing about the invisible hand that had gripped Hux’s throat and squeezed him into submission, forcing him to recite the words of ascension, to acknowledge immediate inheritance.

His fingers were brushing his throat, and he put them flat against his desk, taking a long breath. There was a mountain of work to situate Kylo as a responsible and inevitable new Supreme Leader, to tell the nation that despite the fact that they had never heard Snoke once name a successor of course it had to be Kylo. It wasn’t work he was any good at, but he was the closest to Kylo Ren, and so it was to him that everyone who actually worked with propaganda turned to get their information. Kylo probably didn’t even know that this was happening, Hux thought, taking a drink of tea bitter as his thoughts.

There was a pill dissolved in the boiling water he made his tea with, a stimulant to keep himself awake. It didn’t actually help with the exhaustion that was probably edging towards clinical, but it did keep him from sleeping, which was rather the point. It buzzed in his veins, and if the price he had to pay was a creeping paranoia and quiet humming thought that sleeping meant he’d never wake up again, then that was what he would have to pay.

The words swam in front of him, and he rubbed his eyes a long moment before turning back to his work. It wasn’t his work anymore.

An ocean of swelling grey spread out around him, with a matching sky the roiled just as much as the waters he was in, swimming to keep his head above water. The sky and the sea blended together at the horizon, and there wasn’t a ship or island in view. The ocean below him was empty too. Nothing but water, water everywhere. His coat was dragging him down, and when he tried to shed it, to become lighter that he might float, it wouldn’t come off his shoulders. It pulled him down and down and the waters were cold and dark and he gasped awake, twitchy and safe at his desk again.

Despite that the tea was still hot, he drank the rest of it, wincing at the burn but assured that there was stimulant in there to keep him awake. He always dreamed of drowning when stressed or distressed, if he could just avoid REM sleep until things were in order again then the dreams would go away. He had done it before he could do it now.

But that had been for much shorter periods of time, a corner of his mind pointed out. He ignored it.

It came to a head the next day, when a headache was pulsing behind his eyes from not sleeping well enough in too long. He found himself pushed up against a wall by the new Supreme Leader when trying to talk to him about…something. That was probably a sign that his exhaustion was getting bad.

“When was the last time you slept?” Kylo asked, staring intently at him.

“What does that matter?” countered Hux. “There’s still a war on, and there’s work to be done that you don’t know how to do and have pushed to me.”

“What were you talking to me about just now?”

That was a low blow. “I am perfectly able to handle my own sleep schedule, thank you.”

“Tell me what we were talking about and I’ll believe you.” Hux could only fold his lips, trembling in anger he couldn’t do anything about. Kylo nodded shortly and said, “You’re going to go to sleep. You’re useless exhausted.”

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

“There’s a war on, and I don’t want you getting people killed because you’re too tired to remember what you’re talking about.”

“I am not going to let you dictate my life like this.”

The gaze that turned to him was strict and hard like obsidian, dark and unyielding and born from the fiery terror of a volcano. “I have not allowed you to speak to me like that, not now. I’ll allow it this time, but next time when I order you to do something, do it.”

Swallowing his anger, Hux put on as polite a voice as he could and said, “Very well, _sir._ ”

He didn’t plan on sleeping, but did return to his rooms and hunched himself over his work, avoiding that grey ocean. A sensation like a fist wrapping around his brain caused a headache to explode into being and it was Kylo’s voice that spoke, sounding like it was in his ear as he said, _I don’t appreciate you lying to my face. It doesn’t bode well, does it?_

Before he could do anything, his consciousness was shuffled away and he collapsed limply onto his desk, made to fall asleep. Almost immediately that swelling grey ocean poured in around him, with its desolate horizon. The water was still this time, but the sky boiled like a storm was nearly upon him. He paddled and tread water as best he could, struggling against how his clothes grew heavy with water, but by the end he was pulled under again. He tried to shed his coat, his shirt, anything, but down he went. He gasped awake as the bubbles of his last breath fluttered above him. A handful of hours had gone by, and that was enough. He could get some work done on that much.

He used sonic showers despite the option for water, shying away from water. Stimulants were added to his tea, and he _had_ slept so now Kylo could kindly shove off and leave him _alone_ to do his job as well as half of his. The Supreme Leader could at least be _grateful_.

It was two days before the _venerable_ Supreme Leader _deigned_ speak to him again, and it was worse than last time, somehow. He had been summoned to Kylo’s chambers, with intent to discuss fleet organization, and Hux had come prepared, with all sorts of information and advice. Of course when he did arrive, Kylo took one look at him and said, “You still aren’t sleeping. You’re still useless, exhausted.”

“I don’t recall you ever taking interest in my sleeping habits before,” gritted out Hux. “Supreme Leader.”

“Times change, General. Haven’t you said that the Supreme Leader should take an interest in his people?” Kylo stood before him, then, and lifted a single finger as he said, voice thrumming in power, “You will walk into the next room and sit down and wait for me there.”

“I will walk into the next room and sit down and wait for you there,” murmured Hux, his head fuzzy. He blinked and found himself sitting on the edge of a bed, Kylo pulling his boots off for him. “What–?” he started.

“You’re useless to me now, you’re going to go to sleep,” said Kylo simply. “And that is an order, General.”

Go to sleep? In the Supreme Leader’s bed? “…What?”

His boots were off now, his coat draped over a chair, and now fingers were moving to remove his uniform. Whether he was letting it happen because of some Force nonsense or plain exhaustion was unclear. “You’re very proud of the fact that you’re something close to indispensable, but the longer you stay useless the less true that is. So, you’re going to sleep.”

“I don’t – Ren, _Supreme Leader,_ I–”

“I will make you again if I have to.” None of his questions were being answered, but he found himself stripped down to his underthings and recoiled from having someone so near to him in a state of undress.

“ _Why?_ ” he demanded, still curled away from Kylo.

“No matter what you think, I don’t _enjoy_ seeing you like this.” Kylo narrowed his eyes and held out a hand, unseen hands that were forceful but not cruel pushing Hux to lay down. “Go to sleep. The Order won’t fall apart in the next eight hours.”

No, because cataclysmic events apparently took less than an hour these days, Hux thought wildly. There was a warning nudge against his consciousness, making his vision swim for a moment, and even as there was mute denial in his head, he found himself falling to sleep again.

The swelling grey ocean was there, as inevitable as the stars, boiling and crashing over his head. He spluttered and tried to swim, but he succumbed faster than other nights. Still, under the surface in the empty ocean, he still tried to swim upwards for all the good it did him. It was worse, because he lost his last breath so very close to the surface, the tips of his fingers breaching the surface. He startled awake, and found himself in an unfamiliar room, before he remembered Ren’s absurd insistence that he sleep. The man himself was still in the room, meditating on the floor. Without opening his eyes Kylo spoke,

“Go back to sleep. It’s been three hours.”

“Supreme Leader, this is ridiculous,” said Hux. “There’s work to be done.”

“Go back. To sleep.”

_I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to drown again,_ Hux thought though he said aloud, “Anyone might think you care.” He made to stand, to dress, but unseen hands pressed him back down onto the bed and showed no signs of letting up. Hux had learned the hard way not to fight, because it never actually managed anything. “Are you going to force me back to sleep?”

“If I have to,” answered Kylo, sounding entirely too serene for Hux’s comfort. The ringing silence of the room was absolute, and Hux resolutely kept his eyes open. Finally, Kylo gave a sigh and said, “You’re being ridiculous.” Before Hux could protest that, his consciousness was snuffed out and he was returned to the swelling grey ocean.

He woke again after loosing his last breath, as he always did, and this time there was more than a little despair in him when Kylo instructed him to go back to sleep, and distress when that heavy hand started to close on his mind again. And again he was tossed to the ocean. Again and again, until he woke and immediately started shaking, eyes dry only through years of keeping himself from crying. He didn’t want to drown again, he was just about ready to beg his Supreme Leader to let him work, promise impossible things just so that he could stay awake, so he could fix things, so he could stop dreaming of that inevitable ocean.

“Is this what breaks the great General?” asked Kylo. “The Order might not fall apart if you get a night’s sleep, but apparently you will.”

“Supreme Leader,” tried Hux, eyes staring up to the ceiling and trying very hard to keep his voice even, “there are at least fourteen projects that need my supervision. If you would let me, I could make significant progress on five.”

“And you’ll kill yourself trying. Is it so hard to believe that I’m helping?”

_Yes._ “I–I will lessen my workload, will that satisfy you?”

Now the man sounded curious as he asked, voice quiet, “What haunts you enough you won’t sleep?”

“I have taken on half your own work, if I work less you will have to take that back up, but I could find advisors who might help.”

“Sleep, General.” A hiccup of distress left him, and he started,

“Please, I will manage it myself, I’ll get a sleep aid to stay asleep longer if that’s what you want, please…” But still he found himself surrounded by that desolate ocean. Only now there was certainly something in the ocean. The horizon was still bare, the sky and sea still melded together at the horizon, but where the waters had been empty before now there was something swimming down below, and it made him desperate to stay above water. But his coat, soaking up water, grew heavy, and he did all he could to get away from it, to keep from sinking down to where that something was. The water splashed about him was he thrashed as though it was something he could toss off, his hands scrabbling at where it hung on his shoulders and gasping when he pushed his face back above water. It was the desperate trap, trying to get his heavy coat off would keep him from treading water and he’d sink. But if he didn’t get the coat off, he’d sink all the faster.

He was exhausting himself, and he could no longer muster the strength to break the surface for all that he tried, because there was Something in the water below him. With luck, he’d drown before it got to him and what a horrible thought that was.

His lungs were burning, desperate to replenish the oxygen and release the carbon dioxide, but there was only water around him, swelling grey and without pity. Finally he released the breath, bubbles streaming upwards as water rushed into his lungs. This was when he woke up, why wasn’t he waking up?

Hux jolted awake, gasping for air, hand to his chest, shaking awfully and sitting upright, relieved he could do so. He just breathed for a long moment, sucking in air and grateful that there was air to do that with. Kylo was a brooding shadow in the corner, just staring at him. Hux said nothing, just breathing. He had a feeling he knew what that Something in the water had been.

“You’ll get a sleep aid,” Kylo finally said, standing. “Those usually keep dreams away. At least six hours a night, General, or I’ll declare you useless again and make you sleep.”

Hux recognized what that meant. A repeat of what he’d just gone through, tossed back to the ocean every time he managed to get away from it. Wordlessly, he nodded. Kylo left, and it was with shaking hands that he got dressed again. When he returned to his office, he dropped his face into his hands, took a series of deep breaths and wished that he was just a Lieutenant again, because then no one cared about his sub-optimal coping mechanisms so long as he did his job.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](http://starkilleraflame.tumblr.com/)


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